Death on Gibraltar. Shaun Clarke

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СКАЧАТЬ by Hennessy, Sean was reminded of him as he cycled back through the grim streets of West Belfast, where he saw the usual depressing spectacle of armed RUC constables, British Army checkpoints, Saracens patrolling the streets and, of course, the dickers, keeping their eye on the every movement of potentially traitorous Catholics, as well as the Brits and Prods. Like Hennessy, most of those ill-educated, unemployed teenagers were hoping to eventually break free from the tedium of being mere lookouts to become active IRA members and kill some Prods and Brits. As their dreams had little to do with a love of Ireland, Sean despised them as much as he did Hennessy and others like him, including Mad Dan McCann.

      He was reminded of his contempt for Mad Dan when, entering Tyrone’s two-up, two-down terraced house in one of the depressing little streets off the Falls Road – a strongly Republican street barricaded at both ends by the British Army – he found McCann sitting at the table with Tyrone in the cramped, gloomy living-room, both of them drinking from bottles of stout and wreathed in cigarette smoke.

      ‘Have you come?’ Tyrone asked, using that odd form of greeting peculiar to the Ulster Irish.

      ‘Aye, sure I have,’ Sean replied.

      ‘You look fit. Been out ridin’ on that bike of yours again?’

      ‘Aye. Out Armagh way.’

      ‘Sean rides his bicycle all over the place,’ Tyrone explained to Mad Dan, who was studying the younger man with his dark, stormy eyes. ‘He sits up there on the hills, all wind-blown, and reads history and studies the Irish language. He’s our wee intellectual.’

      ‘Aye, sure I’ve heard that right enough,’ Mad Dan said. ‘He’s got a right brain on his head, so I’ve been told.’

      ‘You’ve met Dan?’ Tyrone asked Sean.

      ‘No,’ Sean replied. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ he added, turning to McCann, but finding it difficult to meet his wild gaze.

      ‘All good, was it?’ Mad Dan asked with a leer.

      ‘All right, like,’ Sean replied carefully.

      Mad Dan burst out into cackling laughter. ‘Aye, I’ll bet,’ he said, then stopped laughing abruptly as Sean pulled up a chair at the table in the tiny living-room. The walls of the house, which belonged to Tyrone’s mother, were covered with framed paintings of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and numerous saints.

      A real little chapel, Sean thought, for Tyrone’s ageing mother. Certainly not for Tyrone. Indeed, when he looked at Tyrone, he knew he was looking at a hard man who had little time for religion, let alone sentiment. Like Sean, Tyrone lived for the cause, but his motives were purely political, not religious. For this reason, Sean respected him. He did not respect McCann the same way, though he certainly feared him. He thought he was an animal.

      When Sean had settled in his hard-backed chair. Tyrone waved his hand at the bottles of stout on the table in front of him. ‘Sure, help yerself, Sean.’

      Sean shook his head from side to side. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘I’m all right for the moment.’

      ‘Oh, I forgot,’ Tyrone said with a grin. ‘You don’t drink at all.’

      ‘Nothin’ but mother’s milk,’ Mad Dan said. ‘Sure, wouldn’t that be right, boyo?’

      ‘I just don’t like drinkin’,’ Sean replied. ‘What’s the matter with that?’

      ‘Men who don’t drink can’t be trusted,’ Mad Dan informed him with a twisted, mocking grin. ‘Sure, isn’t that a fact now?’

      ‘It’s men who drink who can’t be trusted,’ Sean told him. ‘The drink loosens their tongues.’

      ‘And more,’ Tyrone said, wiping his wet lips with the palm of his hand. ‘It also makes ’em too cocky and careless – too inclined to make mistakes. You stay away from it, laddy.’

      The remark offended Mad Dan, making him turn red. ‘Sure, you wouldn’t be accusin’ me of carelessness, would you, Tyrone?’

      ‘Not you, Dan,’ Tyrone said, though he had his doubts. ‘You can hold your own. I mean in general, that’s all.’

      Sean coughed into his clenched fist.

      ‘He doesn’t smoke either,’ Tyrone explained.

      ‘Bejasus!’ Mad Dan said sarcastically. ‘Sure, isn’t he a right wee angel? Where’s your gilded wings, boyo?’

      Sean didn’t bother replying; he just offered a tight smile. ‘So what’s up?’ he asked Tyrone.

      ‘Sure I know you like travellin’,’ Tyrone replied, ‘so I’d like to offer you the chance to travel a bit farther than the tourist sites of Northern Ireland.’

      ‘What’s that mean?’ Sean asked in his quiet, always deadly serious manner.

      Tyrone drew on his cigarette, exhaled a cloud of smoke, then leant slightly across the table, closer to Sean.

      ‘It’s to do with the massacre of our eight comrades by those SAS bastards in Loughgall last May.’

      Sean knew all about that massacre and felt rage just recalling it. This was a real war in the Province, with real death and destruction, so Sean normally tried to remain objective and not let hatred motivate him or, worse, distort his judgement. Nevertheless, the shooting of eight of his comrades by a large SAS ambush team placed inside and around the RUC station at Longhgall, with a civilian driver also killed and his brother badly wounded, had filled him with an anger that could not be contained. While Sean had not personally been informed of that particular IRA raid, it was as clear as the nose on his face that the Provisional IRA teams involved had timed it to take place after the police station was closed, which meant they had not intended bodily harm, but only to blow up the empty building. The response from the SAS had therefore been out of all proportion to the size of the event – a bloody overkill that had merely confirmed for Sean and other IRA members that the SAS was an officially sanctioned assassination squad acting on behalf of the British government.

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